500 Years of Indigenous Resistance

IT MAY not be specifically about Latin America, but this short, pithy history of indigenous resistance to European colonization does encompass struggles in the region and is definitely worth adding to any bibliography that strives to do the decent thing – tell the whole story. Gord Hill has compiled an accessible little volume that paints a more nuanced picture of European settlement in the western hemisphere than the traditional narratives would have us believe and, in particular, how indigenous people have shaped that process and continue to do so. Hill points put, for example, how British colonial policy in British North America brought native Americans and settlers together in resisting the expansionist incursions of the US, and that Canadian settlement was ultimately based not on force of arms, but deception – through treaties that tricked the native peoples out of vast and abundant homelands. He explains how movements for Independence following the American revolution broke out in Latin America and built upon an indigenous tradition of resistance to European control. That resistance continues to this day, and the merit of Hill’s volume is to bring together in one source histories that are often fragmented. - GO’T